"And now, to the main point," Falkenried went on. "What was the tenor of your daily interviews?"
Perhaps Hartmut had not expected this question; a deep red overspread his face, he was silent and cast his eyes on the ground.
"Ah, you do not care to repeat it. I desire to know it. I command you to answer me!"
But Hartmut was still silent; he only pressed his lips closer together, and looked defiantly at his father, who had come close to him now.
"You will not speak? Perhaps a command from the other side keeps you silent? No matter, your silence tells me more than any words. I see how much you are estranged from me already; a little longer with such influences, and you would be lost to me forever. These meetings with your mother are now at an end. I forbid you to see her again. You will go home with me to-day and remain under my protection. Whether that appears cruel to you or not, it must be, and you must obey."
But the Major erred when he believed his son would, as formerly, bow to his stern decree. Hartmut had been for the past few days in a school where all the antagonism of his nature had been aroused against his father.
"Father, you cannot, you dare not order me thus," he cried out now in great excitement. "It is my own mother whom I have found at last, the only one in the whole world who loves me. I will not be separated from her again as I once was. I will not be forced to hate her; threaten, punish me, do what you will with me, but I will not obey this time, I will not obey!"
All the ungovernable passion of his nature broke out in these words; an unearthly fire gleamed in his eyes, and his hands were clenched; every fiber quivered in wild revolt; he was resolved to fight out this battle with his father to the bitter end.
But the burst of anger which he expected did not come. Falkenried looked silently at him, but with a glance of earnest, sad reproof.
"The only one in the whole world who loves you," he repeated slowly. "You seem to forget that you have a father."
"Who has never loved me," cried Hartmut with excessive bitterness. "Since I have found my mother, I have learned for the first time what love is."
The boy seemed almost staggered by this strange tone, vibrating with pain, which he had never heard in all his life before, and the defiance which was about to break forth anew, died on his lips.